He was so careful not to come near, to stay away as I’d demanded that night—and yet now he stepped forward and lightly brushed the back of my hand with his knuckles. Just enough so that I could feel the electric sizzle of power passing from me to him, pulled away by the dark void of shadow inside him.
“Sometimes we can’t help the things we do.”
Every impulse in my body wanted to turn toward him, to slide my hand into his and let our fingers wind together. To smell grass and wind all around me, a light in the deep, dank darkness of this prison. Instead I just stood there, remembering the taste of shadow, waiting for something I knew wasn’t coming.
I cleared my throat and sucked in a ragged breath. “I’m not going to just sit here and wait to die.”
Oren stepped back, letting me move around him and head for the door of the cage. I crouched by the lock, running my hand over it, but I knew I didn’t have enough magic left to open it. When I’d freed Oren from his cage in the Iron Wood, I’d been surrounded by Renewables, and though I hadn’t known it then, I’d been able to draw on them all to bend the laws of magic and iron and open the lock with my mind.
Here there was only me. And I couldn’t magic iron on my own.
My eyes fell on Tansy’s pack. It was still lying where the man had dropped it, well out of arm’s reach even when I lay down on my stomach and stretched my arm as far as I could through the bars. Even Oren’s long arms wouldn’t be able to reach it.
There may not have been Renewables around, but that pack was full of machines. And inside them, somewhere, were tiny hearts full of the magic that powered their clockwork mechanisms.
I closed my eyes, trying to reach past the muffling field cast by the iron bars between me and the pack. I tapped into the tiny, dwindling reserve of energy inside myself and concentrated on my arm, still stretched out past the bars. All I needed was a tiny nudge. A spark. One little touch to get one of the copper spheres to roll my way.
I felt the power spark and pop inside me, my head spinning, but I forced myself to keep reaching, keep trying to nudge one of the machines my way. I opened my eyes a fraction, squinting through the haze of golden sparks and threads.
The bag moved, bulging as something inside it shifted. I groaned, head dropping as the magic flowed from my outstretched fingertips.
Something rolled out of the mouth of the pack, and I dropped like a leaden weight, collapsing down onto the stone. I’d thought magic under ordinary circumstances was tiring— working through so much iron was like trying to run uphill wearing a coat lined with rocks.
Blearily, I lifted my head, forcing my dazzled eyes to focus. One of the spheres had rolled toward me, but when I reached out, my hand still fell short. My heart sank.
A tiny whir of clockwork jolted me out of my daze. A panel separated itself from the smooth surface of the sphere, followed by another, a slow unfolding with a groaning protest of gears, like muscles gone stiff from the cold. A tiny flash of sapphire within the depths of the sphere winked back at me.
“Are they gone?”
I gasped, lightheaded and dizzy from the magic, and unwilling to trust my own eyes. “Nix?” I breathed, staring.
Oren came to my side as I spoke, and together we watched as the sphere painstakingly unfolded itself. It had none of the ease of the courier pigeon the man had shown Tansy—I could tell this form was difficult for the shape-shifting pixie. Nix stopped halfway back to bee-form, gears stirring feebly as it lay on the stone floor. I imagined it panting and sweating, trying to catch its breath.
I reached out my hand as far as it would go, and the pixie crawled onto my palm. “How—I thought maybe you’d escaped when we were taken. Did you double back inside the building?”
“I hid in that antechamber where they keep their suits,” the pixie said. “They never even noticed. When they went out to search the area where you were found, they saw the other one’s bag and the machines inside. I flew in when they weren’t looking.” With an obvious effort it finished its transformation back into its favorite bee form and then cast its crystal-blue eyes over the cell. “Where is that other one?”
“Gone.” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, but even I could hear the way it quivered.
The multifaceted sapphires swung toward me. “So she turned on you. Correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe someone tried to warn you about that.”
I closed my eyes. Already part of me regretted what I’d said to Tansy as they dragged her away. I’d probably never see her again. “Not now, Nix. Please.”
The pixie shook itself and turned, its little legs like dull needles against my palm as it scanned our surroundings. “I see this one is still with us, though,” it said flatly, watching Oren unblinkingly.
“The feeling is mutual,” Oren muttered, turning away and shoving a hand through his hair.
“I couldn’t see or hear anything all balled up like that.” Nix lifted off of my hand for a few seconds, testing its wings now that it wasn’t stuck imitating one of the dormant courier pigeons. “This does not appear to be the optimal place to recover and regroup, however. Why are we wasting time in here?”
“We’re locked in,” I said, trying to remember that I was glad to see Nix. Even if it was infuriating beyond all belief.
“That ought to be no problem for you.”
“Too much iron,” I replied. “Not enough magic. I was trying to reach the pack, thinking I could steal some from the machines in there.” My breath caught. “Nix—can you fly out there and nudge them closer? If I can just get my hands on one, I think I could do it.”
“I can do better.”
Nix launched itself off my hand and buzzed out through the bars to land on the outside of the lock. Spidery little legs unfolded out of its body, the way they did when it was damaged and needed repairing. This time, however, they went skittering over the surface of the lock, darting inside, exploring, thorough. Nix’s round head disappeared inside the lock as well, and for a while the only sounds were the clicking of its spindly legs and the gears that made them move.
But then came a solid thunk. My heart leaped into my throat.
Nix backed out of the lock, half-stuck, tripping into the air. It staggered a bit, struggling to fly while managing far too many legs—but it finally succeeded in folding the extra legs away and zipped back to land on my shoulder.
Hand shaking, I reached out to touch the door.
It swung open.
The tunnels under the city were a maze as complex as the sewer system in my own city—but I hadn’t learned this system as a child at my brother’s side, didn’t know where each turning led. It was like being inside my dream again, only I didn’t know where to go, and I couldn’t feel my brother leading me through.
The place was lit at random intervals by tiny shards of magic contained in glass spheres, connected by glass filaments as finely crafted as any I’d seen in the Institute back home. The advanced craftsmanship was more than a little out of place in a sewer underneath the ruins of a cursed city.
Oren was sweating despite the chill. I knew he was suppressing the panic of being underground by sheer force of will—I couldn’t ask him to try and help me find our way out. He had been semiconscious at best when we were brought to the cell anyway. Nix had been even more blind and deaf. I’d been struck temporarily senseless by the presence of so much iron. The only one who would’ve had any chance of retracing our steps was Tansy—and she was gone.